Fan of breaking echo chambers by being devils advocate. Other than that, centrist. As in in USA I’d be considered left.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Demdaru@lemmy.worldtoMemes@sopuli.xyzWhat it feels like shopping in 2026
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    8 hours ago

    What convenience does a digital wallet add that a card cannot do

    Be part of phone. People don’t like cash cuz you have to lug it around. People are dropping cards for digi wallet because then they don’t have to lug card around.

    isn’t a digital wallet way less safer given that mobile platforms are the least secure ?

    No one outside of lemmy cares.



  • My living standard fell down heavily even tho I earn a lot more than I used too, cannot travel, have to watch out for promotions on food.

    Just over yonder there is an actual war happening as I live in Poland, with one of our neighbours that we know wants to fuck us too, with growing fear of incoming escalation and doubtful allies.

    NATO is set to soon fall apart due to USA, EU tries to become more and more like federal goverment, my own country chose nationalistic idiots and only now, slowly, cuts down their influence…

    And all that next to “normal” crap like being forced to stay in a workplace I feel hateful of with no prospect of any possibility of having an actual career because I ended up in a dead end job.

    I am not priviliged - I am tired. When all I see and hear are bad news, bad becoming worse becomes new normal, new baseline. And sure, it could be worse - war could actually reach us, NATO could dissolve etc., but if your argument for why I shouldn’t be desensitised is literal WWIII then I dunno what to say to you.



    1. I wonder how many enemies Dell made with that lol
    2. AI chatbots work as customer side if implemented well (if chatbot does not have options, it won’t work well) and if customers don’t knee-jerk into repeating they want human without checking it’s options first (which, understandably, came from dealing with badly implemented chatbots). Their search is quite alright for polling public opinions (useful for example if you are lazy and wanna find overall popular film from some genre - it can summarise reddit, google, few review sites and spit the effects at you).

    I know, I know. We are anti-AI here. But please, don’t be simply cynic. This tech has it’s uses, but is so badly used across everything that it’s hard not to be negative of it.




  • You mentioned adding non-Steam games, but that’s just a shortcut.

    And it’s exactly how I mentioned it. It’s simply a way to use some of steam features - for free - even if you use different shop. Their controller support, friend list, library access. A limited amount of access but nonetheless, yet again, something they provide that they don’t have to and other shops (except GOG I believe?) don’t support.

    You lose the “Join Game” buttons, the cloud saves, and the lobby invites. That is the definition of a social moat. You can leave, but you’re socially penalized for doing so.

    Cloud saves should be handled by whatever alternative you choose, and both join game and lobby invites should be ideally handled by game - that’s how it began, didn’t it? Steam simply offered option for games to extend it to friends chat out of the game. And hell, today even Discord of all things has something like this.

    As for competition, the fact that GOG and Itch.io have to hide in tiny niches just to survive proves my point. When the #1 player has 75%+ of the market, they don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be too big to leave.

    I admit, bad wording on my part. But while Itch relies on niche, in GOG’s case I meant their initiative of saving old games. Other than that, they are really competing as a full alternative. And…I just learned GOG does not publish it’s number, huh. But they are constantly growing from what I saw published, so evidently, you can throw gauntlet at Steam and do well. And I just learned that they aren’t really that far on feature parity, with library integration being something unique, huh. No wonder people on lemmy praise it xD

    My solution of mandated interoperability is exactly how we fixed the phone industry. You can switch carriers and keep your number. We should be able to switch launchers and keep our friends and games. If Steam is truly as perfect as you say, they should have nothing to fear from a system where users are actually free to leave. A benevolent gatekeeper who refuses to unlock the gate is still a gatekeeper.

    I just want to underline, again, that this is the first time I am facing that point and thus, have no opinion of my own yet formed, so I am not gonna say anything as it would simply be reductive. First reaction is mixed from me - number is one thing, forcing a store front to suddenly have to change contracts with game providers, clash with legal and all that to essentially allow you to carry over hundreds of products seems iffy. On the other hand, these are just copy keys at the end of the day so the only question is how easy would it be contract-wise? Dunno. And that’s why I am witholding forming an opinion as of now.

    At the end I wanna mention only that our talk made me look up some stuff about both GOG - which I now appreciate a lot more, they really are closing in feature-wise to steam - and phone operators. The second one especially was a weird thing to discover. I was a kid when the number carry-over came to be and, honestly, believed it was some weird marketing strategy…fun to know it was one of early EU thingies.


  • First of all, yeah, price parity sucks…but also the only thing it changes is that simply being cheaper isn’t an option. From my PoV all it does is it forces competition to compete on features. Which they all fail to do.

    Also, it is not just about making a better product. It is switching costs. Because our libraries and social circles are locked into a proprietary ecosystem, we aren’t choosing Steam every day. We are just stuck there.

    Friend, steam literally alows you to load games outside of steam. You absolutely can still rely on steam friends when playing even pirated games. Steam literally allows you to do it. And having more than one store installed, while not comfy, isn’t a sin - we are choosing steam due to it’s services - controller support, linux support, inbuilt forums, friend network, robust review system, robust return policy, great user support, and probably even more that I don’t know about due to being more niche.

    The solution is not for a competitor to build a “more perfect Steam,” that is impossible because Valve has a 20 year head start on our data. The solution is mandated interoperability.

    Again, bull. Let’s look at competition, sans “We only sell our own games” stores.

    • Epic Store - Literally antithesis to all you wrote. They push free games for you to build your library, buy exclusives to remove the forced price, advertise themselves as much as they can to push through steam’s domination…but they don’t support anything aimed at consumers. They don’t give a diddly doo about you. Thus, they fail…better yet, managed to piss people off.
    • GOG store - They tried to innovate and find their niche and…they did it. Oh my, it’s like if you actually offer something it gets apprwciation from clients. It’s small compared to steam and doesn’t offer that much client-side, but with what they offer, they found themselves in stable position and with good public opinion.
    • Itch.io - Similiarily to GOG, they used a niche and created sctually somewhat rich ecosystem there. And again, similiarily to GOG, they achieved stability. Supporting both comments and forums and alloeing creators to be close to their community, they became great place to start up and test waters. But they lack friend networks (AFAIK), game invite integration and all that. Although it seems they are okay with their niche…also I believe that their shop actually did chomp that niche away from steam, so they prove that competition is possible.

    And just to be clean - I am not against your interchangable library idea, although I am not really for it either. I just really disliked how you described steam as some monstrous entity holding people by ransom.





  • Demdaru@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldSame but worse
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    24 days ago

    Your first sentence does clear up some space for me so…

    I do feel for you and I symphatise with your point but my experience and what I saw in others screams at me that pushing and judging people only brings more suffering, because the only reaction to that is going on the defense. Even if they agree, they will protect themselves first, ask questions later…if ever.

    Nostalgia can be a drive for better or a brake, depends on the person - as an example, it was what pushed me to finally better my mental state. I remembered how I was, and how I felt and I wanted to go back. And I did, at least mentally. Demons still out there but as you said in first comment in this chain, it ain’t gonna go away. But I wouldn’t be better if not for nostalgia, among other things, so yeah.


  • Demdaru@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldSame but worse
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    24 days ago

    Okay. I may read the room wrong which does happen sometimes so feel free to correct me but…

    To me, you sound heavily judgemental, even borderline aggressive. Some people - me from the past included - need these small moments like feeling again like a kid to build up motivation and yearning for betterment before they can even start working on themselves. It’s rarely a matter of simply willing it to happen, and for some reason people who already feel different and unhappy don’t react well to being patronised and judged.

    If you want folk to move forward, offer support. To come out of shell you need to feel safer rather than pressured.



  • Demdaru@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldSame but worse
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    24 days ago

    Games were constantly improving and fun, pizza was tastier because it was novel (and either not paid by you, or paid by your own hard worked for money (which differs from adult hard worked money due to lack of feeling of achievement)), and oh my god the sugar rush from snacks.

    Wanna go back? Order some food you love but you order rarely, pop an energy drink and boot up some new, uncharted game after reserving a whole night to yourself. Yeah, you gonna feel like that kid back then.

    Each decade from this kids years tho will translate to an hour of feeling like shit next day tho, no advice there xD